INTRODUCTION
Barlow Roots Newsletter - 5/1/2025

Let’s not skip around the big news of the week. Yes we bought a cow! We weren’t really ready and are now fighting the overwhelm of trying to figure it all out but we’ve always dreamt of a cow and with a friend moving and needing to sell her cow it felt like the right time to try it. We are giving ourselves all the grace of trying this out and making a good honest decision on if a cow is right or wrong for our family. Time will tell! We of course have other things on our plate as well like opening our farmstand this week, bringing our pigs home, building a couple new high tunnels and running a busy family. More updates below!

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Enjoy this weeks newsletter!

HOMESTEAD UPDATE
PIGS, COWS, CALVES OH MY!

Pigs have settled in nicely to the farm this year. They are bigger than we are used to, which is just fine with us, as it means a shorter time on our farm! I am thinking pigs will head to the butcher in early September this year vs. late October. We typically like pigs with some color but this years pigs are all white, beggars can’t be choosers and there just aren’t a lot of places to get piglets so we are good with what we get. The challenge with the white pigs is sunburn, yes really! Our pasture has good shade so here is hoping they do OK. With pigs typically weighing 30 lbs or so when they come to our farm we are able to pick them up and move them so we have some flexibility on if we start them in the barn or in their permanent pasture. With them being about 100 lbs this year, that isn’t really an option. So we backed the trailer right up to their permanent pasture and moved them in.

The cow moving was a bit of a rodeo, literally! The first issue was that we blew a tire on the trailer on our way to pick up the cow. Ugh! I knew it was a little low when we left but when we stopped to fill, it 40 minutes down the road in the town where we would pick up the cow, it was completely destroyed and there was no filling it. So then you need to decide if you are willing to load a 1200 lb cow and her 600 lb calf into a trailer with 3 tires or go all the way back to town and get it fixed. I did also check in with the two small town auto repair places available and neither had the tire we needed (it was a very rare tire size, of course). So we headed back to town. I called our friend who was loaning us the trailer and get this…. his father in law not only had the rare tire at his shop, he also had ALL the equipment needed to swap the tire onto the new rim. In 15 minutes he had us back on the road. WOW!

We got to the farm and began the process of loading the cow. The cow is docile and friendly but she didn’t want to make the step into the trailer. We tried to fashion a ramp but it was slippery and dangerous. So I figured out how to raise the tongue of the trailer thereby lowering the back of the trailer. It was still incredibly difficult to get the cow on the trailer. We effectively rolled the cow into the trailer and then she stood up and all was good! The calf was a wild creature and took some serious rodeo work to get a halter on and pull into the trailer. Thankfully unloading was much easier!

The cows seem to be settling into life on our farm. The cow has mastitis that we are currently figuring out how to treat. Ugh. We’ve been drinking some of the milk and it is great. Because of the mastitis we are milking twice per day. It is ALOT. We are milking with a machine and learning that process. The machine milking is actually really doable though there is some nuance to it. The challenge comes in washing the milk machine! We are working hard to find a system that works for us. The plan now is to have a vet come visit us and help us with the mastitis and give some other suggestions for us on how best to care for the cow. The pigs have also been enjoying the extra milk. If we have to treat the mastitis with antibiotics we will need to take a break from drinking the milk, but the pigs will be fine to drink it.

So that is the cow story! We will see what the rest of the story holds. We will work to build a process that works for us and see how that goes. And honestly if the cow doesn’t work out like we hope, we are fine to move her to another family!

Ingrid and the kids celebrated Earth Day with a clean up of our ditch. I am AMAZED at how much garbage collects. I appreciated their hard work getting things cleaned up and making a small difference for our world.

MARKET GARDENING
High Tunnel Moving and Opening the Stand

We made good progress on our high tunnel projects. If you remember step one is moving our existing tunnel to the west to make room for our new tunnel. With a couple good days of work we got the hoops moved. The process went pretty smooth. The biggest challenge was just getting the tunnel in the correct position so when we install the new tunnel everything is square and lines up. Lots of Pythagorean theorems to figure it out!

Next step is getting plastic and end walls on the moved tunnel to completely clear out the space where the new tunnel will go. It is looking like we will have the new tunnel in the next couple of weeks. We will make a plan for that installation when it arrives. We have enough on our plate right now!

We are in a weird spot with our farmstand right now. We have greens in our high tunnel that are getting too big, but our outdoor greens are still a couple weeks behind. We alerted our customers that we will be opening tomorrow (Friday) but we may not be able to stay open with our regular hours. Because we are down a tunnel we also have tomatoes planted in the same rows as the greens. Which means we are short a few rows in each bed. So all that to say we just don’t have enough greens yet, which is frustrating but out of our hands!

Besides being a little behind everything is looking pretty good in the garden. Indoor tomatoes are doing well and cucumbers and zucchini will soon be in the ground as well. The first 2 months is all about greens. We will supplement with radishes, turnips and soon some carrots as well. We are excited to start feeding all our lovely friends and neighbors!

CLOSING
Easter.

We had an amazing Easter. We stayed close to home this year and got to celebrate with our church family, our own family at the church I grew up in and had an amazing brunch with our family. In a constant changing world and with the ups and downs of life there is one constant in our life and that is the Gospel and our loving God. Easter is such a blessed time to celebrate our risen Savior, but the truth to peace and contentment in life lies in not just celebrating on Easter but reaffirming our relationship with Jesus every single day. Putting our trust and faith in Him is such a powerful gift and I believe gives us a little taste of our eternity in Heaven here on earth. I hope you had a good Easter!

Thank you as always for reading and for following along on this journey. As always I would love to hear from you. If you have questions or suggestions just reply to this email and I will be in touch.